Chemotherapy Magic bullets Fierce hope Commentary

Paul Ehrlich pharmacology

Chemotherapy

• Paul Ehrlich’s cousin, Karl Weigert, was the first person
• to stain bacteria with synthetic textile dyes
• and to introduce aniline pigments for medical studies and diagnostics.
• Paul Ehrlich studied the results of injecting dyes
• into living animals and dreamed of synthesizing a drug
• that would kill all pathogens that cause disease.
• He began to study the parasites that cause sleeping sickness
• but switched the spirochaetes bacteria responsible for syphilis,
• hoping for a drug that would kill the pathogen without harming the person.
• After synthesizing and testing over six hundred
• arsenic compounds for curing syphilis, Ehrlich chose a drug
• that he called arsphenamine, later called salvarsan.
• Salvarsan was highly effective; unfortunately,
• several people died of it. It was replaced in 1912 by neosalvarsan,
• then, in the 1940s, by penicillin, for the treatment of syphilis.

Magic bullets

• The beginning of chemotherapy to treat cancer
• was the accidental exposure to mustard gas
• of several hundred people in Bari, Italy, during World War II.
• Ehlich’s dream of a magic bullet was replaced
• by permission to inject any toxic compound to kill a cancer
• if it would at least not kill the patient outright.
• People who are sure that their disease,
• if untreated, would kill them cling to the hope
• that the treatment for the disease will not.

Fierce hope

• We are not taught how to die
• or how to watch a loved one do it.
• Faced with the unacceptable,
• fierce hope must be our resolve;
• fierce trust must be our character;
• and even our love must be fierce.